


Love Notes & Brain Teasers

by afteriwake



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Cute Sherlock, Cutesy, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Marriage Proposal, POV Molly Hooper, Puzzles, Riddles, Romantic Gestures, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes Has a Heart, Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper Fluff, Sherlock Holmes/Molly Hooper Kissing, Sherlock is a Good Boyfriend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 13:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5293592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/pseuds/afteriwake
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most couples would be content to leave each other a little note with “I love you” or “Thinking of you” on it to brighten up their loved one’s day. Not so with Molly and Sherlock. Their notes stimulate more than just their hearts…they stimulate the mind as well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Notes & Brain Teasers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [daisherz365](https://archiveofourown.org/users/daisherz365/gifts), [bondiyang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bondiyang/gifts).



> This fic was based on one of the lovely **[daisherz365](http://sincerelydayyy.tumblr.com/post/121217446585/let-there-be-headcanons-ii)** 's Sherlolly headcanons (" _Molly leaving notes for Sherlock to find all over their home as a way for him to have mini puzzles to solve. In turn he does it at Barts ever so often much to the annoyance of her colleagues_ "). **bondiyang** picked this in my fic acronym free-for all for me to write and since I vowed to write all of the headcanons to cheer my friend up I was quite pleased it got chosen! The answers to Sherlock's puzzles are in the notes below.

She had always been the type of woman who liked leaving notes for her boyfriends. Well, at least for the ones she was serious about. Not that she’d had many of those, of course, just a few, but she’d thought it was a nice gesture. 

She wasn’t sure they’d appreciated it very much, though. 

Tom hadn’t minded much, at least at first, which had made him seem like much more of a keeper. He’d even left her a few little love notes himself, and when she’d find one tucked into whatever book she’d left on the kitchen worktop or her nightstand, or slipped into her handbag, or placed somewhere in her flat for her to find, she’d smile and keep it somewhere safe to look back on when she needed to be cheered up. But when Sherlock came back things started to sour, and soon enough it hurt to look at the notes. Every stray once in a while she’d come across a hidden note and she’d debate whether to look at it before crumpling it up and tossing it in the rubbish bin without giving it a second glance.

That was when she really knew it was over.

The day she gave him back the ring she decided that the next time she was in a relationship, if she was ever in one again, she wouldn’t be sappy. She wouldn’t be the typical romantic. She’d just try to be…whatever it was the man she was with wanted her to be. Maybe that way the relationship would last longer. She was tired of so many of her relationships having been so short. Tom had been different, and now that was gone, too.

She dealt with being single well enough. Not that she had much time to worry about dating; with the video of Moriarty being broadcast all over the country she had to worry about _that_ instead, and she knew that there was an increased awareness of the people who came into her social circle. She knew that, at the very least, Mycroft was making sure that anyone who came within a three meter radius of her was as spotless as possible when it came to all aspects of their life. And she supposed that scrutiny would be doubled with anyone who had potential romantic intentions.

She ended up spending a lot of time in Sherlock’s company. She was completely convinced that that wasn’t by accident, either. She knew that he saw her as a target of Moriarty’s wrath, a target that had been missed the first time, and that Moriarty was not the type of man who would make the mistake of not taking out a target he had missed if given a second chance. She didn’t mind, though. Sherlock was good company, and she liked spending time with him. She enjoyed working cases with him and running experiments side by side in the path lab and listening to him play the violin at Baker Street. Really, she just simply enjoyed being in his presence.

And slowly she realized that, at least to her, their relationship seemed to be changing. There seemed to be an intimacy between them that was developing, something that was more than friendship. She hadn’t been sure, though, at least not until the night that they were walking back to Baker Street from a restaurant a few blocks away when a sudden rainstorm happened. They were drenched within moments and went to seek shelter under the nearest awning. She was shivering, having only worn a light jumper, and he’d shrugged out of his Belstaff and draped it over her shoulders before pulling it closed. She stared up at him, about to thank him, when he stepped forward, moving his hand up to caress her cheek. The words died on her lips as she leaned in and stood on her the balls of her feet to press her lips against his. And almost as soon as their lips met he reached around and pulled her against him, crushing him against her.

She’d never been so happy to have been caught in the rain before in her life.

It took some time for them to get used to being in a relationship. There were moments where there were missteps, and times where she would get a bit frustrated, but overall it was very nice. They were rather happy. But a part of her felt that it wasn’t quite what she wanted. She felt as though she wasn’t being true to herself, in that she wasn’t being the sappy, romantic person she usually was. Sherlock appeared to notice, and one day there was a box of roses delivered to Barts with a note. _Something to make you smile,_ it said.

And they did make her smile. She met him for dinner at Baker Street that evening and slipped a note saying _Thank you for the flowers and the smile on my face_ on it onto his nightstand before she left. It was two days later that she found a note slipped into her handbag that said _“Our bodies were printed as blank pages to be filled with the ink of our hearts” -Michael Biondi_ on it. Then she knew it was all right to be her sappy, romantic self with Sherlock.

Soon, there were messages going back and forth between them, with quotes and notes, but after a little while Molly decided she wanted to try something a little…different with Sherlock. So one morning, after she had started spending the night at Baker Street and Sherlock had started to spend the night at her flat, she wrote down a riddle that her brother had used to tell her when she was young. _One day Kerry celebrated her birthday,_ she wrote. _Two days later her older twin brother, Terry, celebrated his birthday. How come?_ She folded it up and then slipped it under his favorite coffee cup before she finished her own cup and got her things and headed off to Barts.

The next afternoon she found a note in her office, with Sherlock’s neat handwriting on it. _I appreciated the brain teaser,_ it read. _Here is one for you: what types of words are these: madam, civic, eye, level?_

She chewed on her bottom lip and studied the words carefully, and finally it hit her: they were palindromes, words that read the same forwards as well as backwards. She smiled at that and then took a pen and reached for her pad of paper to jot down another puzzle for him to solve. _This is a story about three people (A, B & C) crossing a desert. A hated C and decided to kill him. He poisoned the water in his sack, since only C had water. B also wanted to kill C (not knowing that the water of C had been already poisoned) and so B made a hole into the sack of C and the water spilt out. A few days later C died of thirst. Who was the murderer - A or B?_ That should be right up his alley, she thought to herself with a smile.

She found the perfect opportunity to leave the note for him when she was going to sleep that evening, leaving it in the loo on the mirror over the sink. She didn’t expect him to wake up at three AM, however, and to decide that was the best time to wake her up and tell her that there wasn’t an obvious solution to the problem. She finally got him to be quiet when she hit him in the face with her pillow forty minutes later. She wasn’t surprised when she saw a bouquet of beautiful flowers at Barts later with a note that read _My apologies for the poor nights sleep. In return, a riddle for you: what ends everything always?_

She had shaken her head, sniffing a rose as she studied the card. He _would_ pair an apology with a riddle. But she rather liked that. She tapped the card as she thought about it. Death was an answer, but then, inanimate things didn’t die, and technically there were things that ended, like shows on the telly, that didn’t “die.” And then it struck her: it was the letter 'g'. She groaned at that and then shook her head. Oh, he was good.

They continued to do this for quite some time. She’d nearly gotten him with the river crossing puzzle involving the family, the copper and the thief; he admitted that for that one he couldn’t do it in his head and had to draw a diagram to come up with the answer of how many trips it took to get everyone across following the set rules (which were that the ferry could carry no more than two people, only the adults could operate the ferry, the father couldn’t be in the presence of the girls without the mother and the mother couldn’t be in the presence of the boys without the father and the thief couldn’t be alone with any member of the family without the policeman). The algebra puzzles had been a favorite of his; he’d been particularly enthused by SEVEN + SEVEN + SIX = TWENTY, ABC + DEF = GHIJ, and the combined puzzles of RE + MI = FA, DO + SI = MI and LA + SI = SOL. He had solved Einstein’s Riddle easily enough, saying he had done it when he was a child, but he’d had a bit more trouble with the Meeting Riddle, which was the same format, involving the eight married couples meeting to lend one another some books. He’d had the widest grin on his face after she’d given him that one.

And he made her days interesting as well. He kept leaving riddles for her as well, sometimes at her flat at sometimes at various spots at the morgue or in her office, sometimes to the consternation of her colleagues at Barts. But she enjoyed them. She had particular favourites that he had picked that she had been eager to share with her nieces and nephews, such as “A cowboy rode into town on Friday, stayed three days, and rode out again on Friday. How did he do that?” (the answer being that his horse's name is Friday) or “From the beginning of eternity, To the end of time and space, To the beginning of every end, And the end of every place. What am I?” (the answer was the letter ‘e’) or “Which is the word in English that has nine letters, and remains a word at each step even when you remove one letter from it, right up to a single letter remaining?” (the answer was the word 'startling') or “How long is the answer to this question?” (the answer, much to her frustration and Sherlock’s amusement, had turned out to be ‘how long’). 

But her absolute favourite had been “Which is the longest word in English?” The answer that she knew as a child was ‘smiles,’ since the word ‘mile’ was between the two S’s, but she decided to be a smartarse about it and told Sherlock the answer was 'Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis,' which is a lung disease that is caused due to inhalation of very fine silica particles, which in turn causes inflammation of the lungs. He had been so impressed by her answer he’d rewarded her quite well when they’d made it to bed that evening.

She was so used to them passing riddles and brain teasers back and forth that it was a shock to see a note folded on the kitchen worktop with a quote on it instead of something to make her think. The note had been sitting next to a bouquet of red roses and tulips when she’d gotten home and she’d picked it up, reading it once with a frown, and then reading it again. “Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife. Franz Schubert,” she said quietly.

“Well, you are my truest friend, even more so than John,” she heard Sherlock say from behind her. She whirled around, looking at him with wide eyes. He stood there, holding a small velvet box in his hands that was open. There was a ring inside, a beautiful antique looking opal ring that appeared to be set in vines with diamonds on the leaves. She stepped closer to him as he sank down to one knee. “I love you, Molly. I would love for you to be the woman I spend the rest of my life with, the woman I wake up with every morning and go to sleep with every night. The woman I share my most important moments with, the triumphs and the hardships.” He took her left hand and slipped the ring on her hand. “Will you do me the honor of marrying me?”

“Yes!” she said, nodding vigorously. When he let go of her hand she framed his face in her hands and then leaned down and kissed him. Oh, she loved this man so very very much. There was no man more suited for her in all the world, no man more perfect for her, and she would never let him go, not in a million years.

**Author's Note:**

> Here are the answers to the puzzles posed to Sherlock (as well as two of the puzzles in their entirety):
> 
>  **The "The Elder Twin" Puzzle** At the time she went into labor, the mother of the twins was travelling by boat. The older twin, Terry, was born first early on March 1st. The boat then crossed the International Date line (or any time zone line) and Kerry, the younger twin, was born on February the 28th. In a leap year the younger twin celebrates her birthday two days before her older brother. 
> 
> **The "Murder In The Desert" Puzzle** Most people would say that A is the murderer. Solicitor of B would stress 2 things:
> 
>  **1.** to take away poisoned water from someone does not mean killing him,  
>  **2.** B just made C live longer, even if he did not mean to (the poison might have killed C earlier).
> 
> However, solicitor of A could present the following argument: "How can be A be punished for committing a murder by poisoning C, if C did not swallow a single drop of poison." Therefore, it could be argued either way.
> 
>  **The "River Crossing Game" Puzzle** This is the order of the 17 trips needed to get everyone across:
> 
>  **1.** Police Officer, Thief  
>  **2.** Police Officer  
>  **3.** Police Officer, Boy 1  
>  **4.** Police Officer, Thief  
>  **5.** Dad, Boy 2  
>  **6.** Dad  
>  **7.** Dad, Mom  
>  **8.** Mom  
>  **9.** Police Officer, Thief  
>  **10.** Dad  
>  **11.** Mom, Dad  
>  **12.** Mom  
>  **13.** Mom, Girl 1  
>  **14.** Police Officer, Thief  
>  **15.** Police Officer, Girl 2  
>  **16.** Police Officer  
>  **17.** Police Officer, Thief
> 
>  **Algebra Puzzle #1** 68782 + 68782 + 650 = 138214
> 
>  **Algebra Puzzle #2** 437 + 589 = 1026 or 743 + 859 = 1602
> 
>  **Algebra Puzzle #3** 27 + 56 = 83, 40 + 16 = 56, 93 + 16 = 109
> 
> Both Einstein's Neighbours Riddle and the Meetings Riddle can be found in their entirety (with solutions) [here](http://brainden.com/einsteins-riddles.htm). All the rest of the riddles (along with others like them) can be found [here](http://brainden.com/crossing-river.htm), [here](http://brainden.com/algebra-puzzles.htm), & [here](http://www.buzzle.com/articles/hard-riddles-good-brain-teasers.html).


End file.
